Secret 37: Time Management for Lapsed Anarchists

Excerpted from Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 3:
A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Being a Better Leader.

We teach many different classes for our staff here at Zingerman’s—courses on leadership, service, open book finance, food, etc. While it hardly seems the most glamorous of the group, one of the most oft requested is the course we do on time management.

Time is one of the key resources we can tap when we set to work to manage ourselves—and our surroundings—more successfully. Whether we realize it or not, our relationship with time is one of the most intimate we engage in—time is with us everywhere we go and it impacts every other relationship we have. Clearly, we can’t live without it. While it’s hard to lose any long-term relationship, if time runs out on us, it feels like—and in fact is—the end.

To be clear, nothing that's included here is a lecture on why you should use your time better. If you’re good with how things are for you now, then, quite simply, keep going! On the other hand, if you’re up for making some modest but meaningful improvements, maybe the practices in this essay will prove helpful. Ari says, "There is no more time in the day than there was when I started, but I feel better about it now than I ever have."